Reliance to roll out IPTV by year end

Reliance to roll out IPTV by year end

Anil Dhirubhai Ambani promoted Reliance Communications plans to roll out Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) by the end of this year, a top official said.

Reliance Communications president Mahesh Prasad said on the sidelines of the BIG TV launch here on Tuesday: "With customers demanding personalised entertainment, IPTV service would allow subscribers more choice and control. We will launch this service within this year."

Earlier in November 2007, Reliance Communications announced a tie-up with Microsoft to use its software for IPTV and paid a licence fee of $500 million.

IPTV will allow operators to deliver content to their subscribers using telephone lines through IP technology. So far this technology was being used to deliver voice over Internet telephony. The services on IPTV include video-on-demand and digital video recording.

When I was hunting for BB, I went to all these private players - Airtel, Reliance, Tata Indicom, falsely believing that they would be way better than BSNL. That was over a year ago. Every body came back saying that they cannot offer me connection as my area is not covered. And I live in one of an upmarket locality in Pune city. BSNL took 2 months but they were the only people who provided me a connection.

This was over a year ago (Mar, 2007). Just for fun, I called Airtel and Reliance again 4weeks ago (for fun) and guess what - my area is still not covered.